Phone-hacking victims may sue News Corp. in U.S. courts

The phone-hacking scandal that broke last fall mired Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. in a legal nightmare on the other side of the pond, with more than 65 lawsuits filed against the media empire after Scotland Yard shared seized evidence with potential victims. Now, News Corp. may be facing its first stateside litigation.

London police showed three people documents they seized from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire that suggested he collected phone numbers and other information from the three of them when he was working for News Corp.’s now-shuttered tabloid News of the World and while they were in the U.S. The documents do not prove Mulcaire hacked into the victims’ voicemails, but it doesn’t look good.

While the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has turned up no evidence of Murdoch’s henchmen phone-hacking in the U.S., high-profile British lawyer Mark Lewis, who has represented many News Corp. phone-hacking claimants, is expected to visit the U.S. in April to consult with American lawyers about the possibility of filing similar lawsuits in the U.S. court system.